The KDE Project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of KDE 3.3, the fourth major release of the award-winning KDE3 desktop platform. Over the past six months, hundreds of applications and desktop components have been enhanced by a community of developers, with a particular focus on integration of components.

Stephan Kulow, KDE Release Coordinator, said: "The desktop reached a quality
hard to top in previous releases. Nevertheless, KDE 3.3 is a great
improvement and will further strengthen KDE's position as the leading Free
desktop environment."

Building upon previous releases, noticeable improvements in usability,
stability and integration have been achieved, enhancing the desktop
experience. A range of new applications and features have also been
implemented, including KolourPaint (screenshots), an easy-to-use paint program. Over 7,000
bugs have been fixed, and 2,000 wishes fulfilled, with over 60,000 lines of
code and documentation being written in the past six months. KDE is now
available in 89 different languages, with recent additions including Farsi
(Iran) and Indic character support.

Comments

SUSE quietly released their RPMs a couple of days ago. Everything seems better/nicer/more polished/elegant/stop reading when you get bored reading eulogy.

Slightly off topic - but if anyone is looking for evidence in "the when are Novell going to dump KDE" debate, they clearly won't find it on the SUSE website. SUSE KDE RPM publishing/updating feels more active since Novell.

How does that work exactly? Will SuSE eventually update their main YOU servers, or do I need to manually change the sources if I want to use this? If so, how do I do this? Sorry, I just switched to SuSE and don't know how they work.

By default SuSE only provides security and bug-fix updates via YOU. They are constantly backporting fixes and what not, so you'll have a completely stable and secure KDE 3.2.

They don't provide updates for new features or application versions though, this is to prevent maintenance headaches in large organisations when everyone updates to new versions with new issues and new bugs.

Feature updates are available on the SuSE site however, and if you follow the parent's instructions you can access these new updates via YaST2.

In YaST, you can specify multiple software sources.
Just add the source mentioned above in addition to your primary installation source.
YaSt will display the available upgrades in the software installation module.
Select the ones you want to upgrade by clicking with your RMB on the packagename and select 'upgrade'. You can also upgrade a complete group by selecting [selections] in the combobox on the right, and RMB click on the selection [kde packages]. Choose the option called something like [upgrade packages if available].

I have the same problem. Since upgrading (sic) to KDE 3.3 I haven't been able to start Open Office within KDE. It pops the same accursed message you just posted. OO runs in any other desktop environment perfectly, though.

I am trying the OpenOffice installer today, instead of relying on the Apt updates. I'll post the results here in a while (but I doubt there won't be any problem)

Deleted OpenOffice_org (rpm -e OpenOffice_org-en OpenOffice_org-lang OpenOffice_org-en-help OpenOffice_org) and then went to the openoffice site and downloaded the installer tarball ( http://download.openoffice.org/1.1.2/index.html )
untarred/unzipped it (tar zxvf OOo_1.1.2_LinuxIntel_install.tar.gz) and then installed it (~/OOo_1.1.2_LinuxIntel_install/./setup -net)

Never to trust those darned rpms again.

(sorry about the instructions but if someone needs them, they are here!)

Actually, the packages a few days ago were of RC2. They were labeled as 3.3 in case that release were deemed good enough to be called final. They have freshly updated 3.3 final packages just posted today. Multimedia doesn't seem to have updated packages yet, but that might just be because nothing changed from RC2. (Just speculation. Does anybody know for sure?) Bindings and sdk are also still at 3.2.x

Still, your point about quick updates still stands. Plus, unlike the upgrade to 3.2 on SuSE 9, there is no conflict between kdebase and kdebase-SuSE.

Does anyone else have problems with Plastik not being available after the update on SUSE 9.0? I tried both the kdeartwork3-3.3.0-1.i586.rpm I got via apt-rpm and the .0-3 build from the SUSE ftp server. Both files applied without conflicts, but plastik is not available in KControl anymore. The files are in /opt/kde3/lib...

I know my employers would immediately stop buying SuSE if they "dumped KDE", and I feel that the idea of there being a serious "when are Novell going to dump KDE" debate is nothing more than flamebait.

Most companies I know of that have large GUI-based workflows are not going to "dump" any of the principal contenders for end-user productivity, and with the best will in the world, there are Desktop Environments out there that suffer because they don't seem to get used in any such context.

I mean, can you see designers doing any serious GUI-based work in a GUI which doesn't even let them select multiple files in the stock file selection dialog?

...and that's if you forget about the 'loads of design and no useful functionality' superfluous technologies that keep getting incorporated into gnome.

People have to download and install >20mb of superfluous tech to get indexed search in some desktop environments - indexed search which, hilariously, relies on a separately obtained kernel modification anyway. All sounds a bit Redmond to a lot of companies, that sort of thing.

I like Gnome, and KDE, but I'd be very surprised if anybody sane is having a "when are Novell going to dump KDE" debate.

I have to agree with this. Python, PyQt and Designer is what I use for all my private development. It's so easy and so fast to get advanced things done. And the stability of the bindings is amazing, I can't remember a single crash which wasn't due to an error I did. :)

That's absolutely true... I remember I was completely astonished at finally having found a problem that didn't fit PyQt -- a fast, optimized drawing application with natural media support. For most things, from data mangling to mail clients, PyQt is the smart choice.

Argg. Bad choice IMHO. This is the time for Mandrake to get KDE 3.3 in Community. That's exactly what community is for: community testing. KDE 3.3 will take several package rebuilding and bug-fix backporting from CVS cycles before it gets stable. No way it will stabilize for the official release if they dont release now and get broad testing. Anyways, I don't wanna get off-topic too much. Thanks guys for the feedback!

No, a rock solid 3.2 is far better than 3.3. Many people, including me, need a distribution that is suitable for people who are not computer experts. A distribution they can use without having to worry about bugs.

The problem with Mandrake is that they do not offer the latest KDE for the experienced users, not even at the commercial mandrakeclub.

That was exactly my point. Mandrake community is not even close to release, and official will follow a month later. This gives ... what ? 2 months ? about 2 months from now. To me, that's plenty of time to stabilize KDE 3.3 (with CVS fixes, plus cooker fixes, plus community reported bugs being fixed). Gee, KDE may release a quick 3.3.1 with the first bugfix collection even before official. Oh well ...

And back to the drake, IMHO they are missing one component: a yearly, corporate edition, low paced but ultra stable. Big corporations will rather miss a few features than hit a bug. KDE 3.2.* would be ideal for this corporate edition right now.

And one more point. Mandrake won a lot of mind sharing by staying in the bleeding edge. Lots of people, mostly enthusiasts and devs, like that. Give them that, keep them in, and get their contributions!